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Mark Four And Total Depravity

Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 4:17 pm
by _james
Mark Four:

"And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them."

Christ is speaking in parables so that they will not understand and be converted, with their sins forgiven. That makes no sense in the Calvinist model. Why use parables with the totally depraved? It would be unnecessary.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 12:31 am
by _Anonymous
Interesting point :-). I'll see what I can find on it.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 5:23 am
by _Anonymous
de wrote:Interesting point :-). I'll see what I can find on it.
Well thanks De, I have yet to hear a good explaination...

james

Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:41 am
by _Iwavvnv644
Um, Christ says things in parables always ending or most of the time ending them with saying, "Let those who have ears let them hear."


If one can figure out what that means, then it will show ur answer.

Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 4:21 pm
by _james
'Iwavvnv644 wrote:Um, Christ says things in parables always ending or most of the time ending them with saying, "Let those who have ears let them hear."


If one can figure out what that means, then it will show ur answer.
Yes He does, but I fail to see how that answers the question - why would Christ need to veil His message in parables?

Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 4:29 pm
by _Steve
James,
I do believe that your question is unanswerable in terms of Calvinist presuppositions. Upon those suppositions, the natural man is incapable of repenting or believing. He can only do these things if God first works a special unilateral work of regeneration in to the heart, bringing him from death to life, which then allows the man to be freed from his blindness, to repent of sin and to put his faith in Christ. These presuppositions are not found in scripture, but they are a necessary part of Calvinist anthropology.

Obviously, if these Calvinist assumptions were correct, and if God did not wish for a man to repent or believe, there would never be any occasion for God to further harden a man's heart or conceal His message in mysteries, since the man's default condition, lacking special grace, would preclude any possibility of his repentance or faith anyway. God need do exactly nothing, and He would thereby guarantee that man would never repent or believe.

The fact that God is specificly said to actively "harden" certain peoples' hearts, to "blind their eyes" and to conceal His mysteries "lest they should be converted," bears eloquent testimony that the Calvinist view is wrong, and that God sees the sinner as one who, even in a state of being "dead" (like the prodigal son—Luke 15:24), has the potential of repenting and believing on his own, unless God takes special steps to render this impossible in certain cases (e.g., Pharaoh, the Jews of Jesus' day).

This seems so obvious to me that it is hard to imagine why there are Bible students who are still Calvinists. "Seeing, they see, and do not perceive..."

Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 4:33 pm
by _james
Amen Steve, I have yet to hear a logical response from Calvinists concerning Mark Four and the relating texts.

Re: Mark Four And Total Depravity

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:07 pm
by _Ely
james wrote:Mark Four:

"And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them."

Christ is speaking in parables so that they will not understand and be converted, with their sins forgiven. That makes no sense in the Calvinist model. Why use parables with the totally depraved? It would be unnecessary.
Great quandry. I'm going to ask my Calvinist friends this same question.

This is how I would try and answer this if I were a Calvinist (which I'm not):

Jesus was only talking about those people in Israel at that time who actually heard His parables. At that time, God was judicially blinding Israel so that His Son would be crucified.

However, once He had been glorified, the apostles spoke the gospel freely, without hiding anything. All of those people who had heard the parables, were eventually saved. In other words all of them were the (unconditionally) elect who had been given the ability to believe. It's just that God did not want them to believe at that time.

This sounds quite good to me. The only problem is Judas. We know he wasn't part of the elect because he died as an unbeliever. However, we also know that he heard the parables (and receieved the interpretation).


Maybe a Calvinist could say:

Jesus' words did not apply to him, they only applied to those who were outside Jesus' disciple circle. Judas was not part of those masses and so he didn't have the ablility to believe.

It's very strained, but so are alot of Calvinistic explanations. Has anyone else heard any mor eplausible answers to this conondrum yet?